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Quotes by Historian

"Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will."

"My first name - I have no middle name - was chosen by my father, as he told me, on that solitary walk in the forested hills. He selected it from a verse of the seventh chapter of Isaiah; there was no Immanuel among our ancestors known to him."

"The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands."

"The left no longer stands for common sense, as it did in the days of Tom Paine."

"Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery."

"A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period."


"The primary source of the appeal of Christianity was Jesus - His incarnation, His life, His crucifixion, and His resurrection."


"Common sense varies among the young, as among the old."

"Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse."

"Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces."

"Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense."

"Expansion means complexity and complexity decay."

"The left has lost touch with popular opinion, thereby making it possible for the right to present itself as the party of common sense."

"With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that."

"The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies."

"To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree."

"To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice."

"The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers."

"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos."

"You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one."

"Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive."

"The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state."

"So long as large armies go to battle, so long will the air arm remain their spearhead."

"The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error."

"The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies."

"Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day."

"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature."

"Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything."

"Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches."

"Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another."

"Nothing is so useless as a general maxim."

"The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature."
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